U10 Girls get bronze at The Olympic Park

The U10 Girls also put in a good show at The CGL Futsal Tournament at The Copperbox in Stratford.

Our first opponents were Enfield Town. The match started without either of our coaches noticing that Enfield were a girl short. Before we had time to offer to drop numbers to match, a very useful Alexandra Park player joined the fray on Enfield’s side. As Enfield went on to borrow other players, of varying ability, for each of their other games credit should go to them for their eventual triumph. We did however feel that we faced a stronger Enfield team than most of our opponents. Some ill-disciplined play saw us fall a goal behind but Krystal made amends by equalising late on.

Next up were Alexandra Park and two goals from Roop, and an absolute scorcher from Chloe (Goal of the morning by some distance !), gave us a comfortable 3-0 victory. Our final group game was against Islington Borough. A win could have seen us win the group and progress to the final. We created chances aplenty but shot either wide or straight at the keeper and it ended 0-0.

We finished 2nd and found ourselves in an unexpected 3rd place play off (No mention in the rules, the programme or the managers’ meeting) against Camden. We fell 0-2 behind but a magnificent fight back thanks to goals from Ciara M. & Roop brought it back to 2-2 and a penalty shoot out. Dave had to apologise profusely to Yahvi for failing to get her on during a hectic match. In amends she was selected as one of our penalty takers.

Ciara M despatched our first penalty superbly. Camden missed their first and Krystal saved the second. Roop’s effort went wide but Camden then did the same to give us the win. Their keeper sportingly agreed to face one more from Yahvi who, otherwise would have missed out on the shootout too !

Although the whole squad played well, Girl of The Tournament went to Roop who gave an object lesson in cool finishing that one or two others in the team need to take on board.

With the pitches still available we were delighted to take Hampstead up on their offer of an informal 6 a side friendly for a good 20 minutes before finishing with a just for fun penalty shoot out involving all the girls.

It only remained to fight our way back through the nightmarish crowds in Westfield to Stratford Station all the while giving thanks that we have something better than shopping to do with our Saturdays 🙂